man’s name is Carver. He’s kind of unofficial, not on any list. So don’t hurt him if you can manage it. But it’s no big deal if you do. Take it from me-he won’t be missed.”
95
Carver walked across the underground hangar thinking, At last, I’m doing my job. After all that had happened, he was back to what he understood: drifting imperceptibly into the lives of very bad people, removing them from the planet, then slipping away again.
The different groups of people scattered about the hangar played right into his hands. Darko’s militiamen mingled with Yugoslav Air Force personnel, while McCabe’s bodyguards looked on, and mechanics and air crew went about their business. No one noticed, still less cared about, Carver.
He’d ripped the two CD player earphones apart and stuck one of them in his ear, letting the wire run down inside his shirt. He was back in his civilian clothes, shades on his face, his gun stuck in the waistband of his trousers, the fisherman’s bag slung over a shoulder. He could be anyone.
His luck just kept getting better. There was a mechanic standing on a ladder at the rear of McCabe’s plane, with his head and shoulders inside the rear equipment bay, pouring hydraulic fluid from a plastic jerry can. Carver stood at the bottom of the ladder and called up, “Hey you!”
The mechanic turned and looked down at him with a puzzled frown.
Carver held up a hand.
“Hold on there,” he said, making the other man wait while he held a finger up to his earpiece, as if trying to hear over the noise in the hangar, then spoke into the wristband of his shirt. “Uh-huh, yeah, I’m on it… I’m there right now… Yeah, I’ll do that. Out.”
He looked back up the ladder.
“Okay now-you speak English?”
The man shook his head.
“Right, well, see if you understand this… You”-He pointed at the mechanic-“off the plane.” He jerked his finger down toward the hangar floor, then repeated the motion, clearly indicating the man should get off the ladder.
The mechanic stayed where he was, uncertain how to respond.
Carver gave a theatrical sigh of irritation.
“All right, then… Plane…” Now he gestured at the aircraft. “American. Me”-he tapped his own chest-“American.”
Could a Serb who couldn’t speak English tell the difference between a real American accent and a bad English fake? Carver would have to hope not.
He repeated his little mantra: “Plane American, me American,” then added, “Me go into plane. You… off the plane.”
The mechanic looked at him, puffed his cheeks, exhaled heavily, then shrugged. He didn’t need to say a word to convey his message: He thought Carver was a jerk, but he couldn’t be bothered even to attempt to argue with him. He climbed down off the ladder.
“Here, I’ll take that,” said Carver, taking the jerry can from the man’s hand.
He went up the ladder into the bay. Laying his bag on the fuselage floor, he finished topping off the hydraulic accumulator. Then he got out his tools: a wrench to loosen the connections of the hot-air pipes, and a wire cutter to strip as much plastic insulation as possible off the wiring bundles in the same. He wasn’t going to hand McCabe another lifeline. This plane was going down hard. And just to underline the point, he left the jerry can, still half filled with inflammable fluid, its top unscrewed, in the equipment bay when he closed up and left.
He made his way back to the truck, sorely tempted just to put that Serb uniform back on and drive out the way he had come, get out before anyone even knew he’d been there. The urge to stay, though, was stronger. He wanted to see McCabe get on the plane, watch it as it roared down the runway, follow its path into the sky. This time he had absolute confidence in the work he’d done. The aircraft was a death trap. The moment the pilot switched on the jets, its fate was assured. He just needed to know that his prey was aboard.
A movement caught his attention. The over-handsome, Italianate man Carver thought of as Loverboy was emerging from the office at the side of the hangar. Behind him came one of Darko’s men, pushing the cart on which the brown suitcase was resting. They walked over to the aircraft, and as they did so, the door in the underside of the fuselage opened to meet them, swinging down until it hung vertically from the aircraft. A metal frame, like a cradle, was lowered though the doorway, coming to a halt about four feet above the ground. There was already a military-green bundle filling the top half of the cradle, which looked to Carver like a parachute in its sack. It took two men to lift the case from the cart and put it into the cradle, while Loverboy supervised the operation. He checked that the case was secure and had been strapped onto the parachute, then signaled to someone inside the plane, and the cradle disappeared back up into the fuselage again, followed by the closing door.
The bomb was loaded.
96
Francesco Riva returned to the office where Waylon McCabe was waiting. On his way, he passed the Serbian, Darko, who was leaving with a contented smile on his face, like a hyena who has fed well. Riva opened the office door and went in, followed by the two armed guards who’d been standing outside.
“You done?” rasped McCabe.
It was apparent to Riva that this was a very sick man, one close to death. His face, always lean, now seemed little more than a skull, barely covered by skin stretched so tightly over the bone that it seemed it might split open
